


Remember the Last Time We Were Here

by BeaArthurPendragon



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Blanket Permission, Blow Jobs, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Hand Jobs, M/M, Missing Scene, Oral Sex, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Psychological Trauma, Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Wartime Romance, Whump, World War II, high school romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-07 01:51:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18400724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeaArthurPendragon/pseuds/BeaArthurPendragon
Summary: “We were in love,” Bucky said. It wasn’t a question. “I remember that much. I know it. And we had been for a long time.”Steve shook his head. “Could you ever have imagined living in a world where we could’ve had a chance?”“Don’t need to imagine it anymore,” Bucky said, turning to look at Steve.———Scene fill forCivil War—Steve, Bucky, and Sam hide out in Germany while waiting for Clint and the others to arrive. Steve and Bucky use the time to get reacquainted, and find that while Bucky's forgotten so much of his past, he still recalls what's most important to them both. That doesn't mean it's easy. It never is.





	Remember the Last Time We Were Here

**Author's Note:**

> Civil War is one of my problematic faves, I wanted to give our boys the reunion they deserved, even if we didn't get to see it. This is my first ever Stucky fic, so please be kind. xoxo
> 
> I don't usually beta stuff, because then it feels like work instead of fun, but please feel free to kindly point out any flubs in the comments.

Steve had no idea that going on the run would mean running so slow.

They had decided to fly out of Leipzig. Though the Berlin airport had plenty of nonstop flights deep into Russia, it would be bristling with facial-recognition tech that they wouldn’t be able to bypass without Avenger resources, while Leipzig, which only handled air cargo and a handful of short-haul vacation flights was unlikely to merit a second look. But they also offered sightseeing helicopters and one of those could get them to the Bavarian National Park, where they could hike 15 miles across the Czech border to a private airstrip where there would be a charter plane waiting to take them to Yekatarinburg, and from there they could hop a long-haul cargo flight to Yakutsk, and, yeah, that meant two solid days of air travel, but without a quinjet, it was the best they could do.

Assuming Clint could round up the new passports—and the guy who got them made—in time.

Because Clint and Wanda were in New York and Tic-Tac was in San Francisco and nope, no quinjet for them, either, so it was the redeye out of JFK (6 hours), a very long and disorienting conversation with Tic-Tac about who they were and what they needed (1 hour), an even longer and more disorienting conversation with Tic-Tac’s associates to negotiate new passports and IDs and credit cards (2 hours), an afternoon to get it all made (4 hours), another redeye to JFK (6 hours), a layover and a prayer their new passports would get them through customs (3 hours), a flight to Prague (8 hours), and finally, sweet baby Jesus, a rental van from Prague to Leipzig (4 hours).

Which is how Steve, Bucky, and Sam ended up in an abandoned Hydra safehouse in forest outside Halle with almost two days to do nothing but shower, eat, sleep, and try not to get caught.

“Hydra sure liked to do crimes in style,” Sam said, whistling appreciatively. The house was more like a luxury hunting lodge—at least six bedrooms, situated on four acres of steel-fenced land on a high bluff overlooking a large lake.

“High-end vacation rentals make good safehouses,” Bucky said. “Easy to secure when you’ve got to stash a VIP, big enough to house a team, and nobody thinks twice about random people coming and going all the time.”  

“Are you sure nobody’s watching this place, Buck?” Steve asked.

Sam flipped the lights on. “Or going notice a spike in the electric bill?”

Bucky pointed to the ceiling. “No bills,” he said. “Solar roof. Well water. Plumbing’s on septic. We’re completely off the grid. This is one of a few we kept completely off the books just in case we were compromised—there won’t be any record of it in the files Romanoff released.”

Steve was skeptical. “There are plenty of former Hydra officers looking to trade information for lighter sentences locked up back home. You sure none of them know about this place?”

Bucky shrugged. “A risk. But I doubt they’re interested in helping anyone catch us. Chaos is their game. This—is Hydra’s wet dream.”

“Take the win, Rogers,” Sam said mildly, breezing past him toward one of the bedrooms with his bag. “A shower and a good night’s sleep isn’t the worst thing to have under your belt before we head back out.”

Steve gave a tight smile. Sam was right. And lord, Bucky needed it. Even though he’d slept for nearly two hours on the journey from Berlin to Halle, the nap had done little to erase the bone-deep exhaustion that shadowed his old friend’s face now.

No sooner had Sharon left them beneath that underpass outside Berlin, Bucky curled up in the back seat and fell into the deepest, stillest sleep Steve had ever seen. Steve had monitored his breathing in the rearview mirror so many times that Sam insisted on taking the wheel so Steve could check on him as many times as he wanted to.

And he could not stop looking, could not stop marveling at how much of his old friend was still there in the Winter Soldier’s face. Sleep had slackened his brow and jaw a little, and suddenly he was 16 again, sighing and snoring softly next to Steve on the sofa pillows piled on the floor of the Barnes’ living room.

Steve couldn’t remember which sleepover it was when he realized how easy it would be for him to reach across the six inches that separated them to rest his hand on Bucky’s arm, feel the warmth of his muscle and bone beneath the smooth, lightly freckled skin. That was all he wanted—all he dared to want. He’d batted the thought away immediately, though—even that modest desire carried a sting he didn’t dare risk. And yet, as they grew older, they grew even closer, and it became harder and harder to ignore the suspicion that their attachment went beyond friendship.

Early in their senior year of high school they began to steal away to the roof of Steve’s apartment building and hide among the hanging laundry to jerk off together, racing to see who could come first. It was all the more dangerous now that they were both 18, old enough to be charged with public indecency, even sodomy, if they got caught. Old enough to lose everything for a few moments together.

Yet that made Steve’s heart beat all the faster. He might not have been able to enjoy the thrill of running fast or tackling a quarterback or swimming hard against the waves at Coney Island, but this made up for all them: Watching his best friend unbutton his trousers and take out his cock, already half-hard in anticipation, then let it sit there, exposed and softly flexing while he spit into his hand and then closed his fingers about it as Steve did the same.

Everything merged in his imagination: His hand was around Bucky’s cock and Bucky’s hand was around his, and they were moving together like lovers, Bucky’s gasps and grunts feeding Steve’s own pleasure and—he came later to realize—his feeding Bucky’s in return. He loved to turn his head and sneak a glimpse of Bucky’s face in those moments, that urgent, joyful look of concentration that Steve came to adore because it was theirs, and theirs alone.

And then one day he sneaked a glance at Bucky and realized that Bucky was looking at him in return. And for some reason—the _only_ reason, Stevie—neither one of them flinched or startled or looked away. Bucky gave a distracted grin and then Steve smiled back and they locked their eyes on one another and kept going.

They didn’t talk about it afterwards, just laughed a little as they cleaned themselves up—but as Bucky opened the door for them to go back downstairs, he pulled Steve in close in a kind of sideways hug and kissed the top of his head.

Steve didn’t know what to do with that, so he did what he always did when he wasn’t sure about something: He watched and waited. Three agonizing weeks passed before Steve’s mother took another afternoon shift at the hospital, allowing the boys another chance to steal up to the roof undetected. Three agonizing weeks where they both pretended everything was normal, that nothing out of the ordinary had happened, that they had not crossed a line that everyone and everything in their world told them not to cross.

And this time—this time was different. This time Steve had brought the old quilt up and spread it out between the clotheslines like usual, but this time Bucky didn’t sprawl down on it right away.

This time he remained standing, facing Steve, with flushed cheeks and a slightly openmouthed smile on his face, his hips already swaying a little with interest. Steve glanced up to meet his eyes and Bucky answered his question with a glance down. Steve followed his gaze to Bucky’s fly, and reached forward to undo the buttons. Bucky gave a low hum of pleasure as the buttons fell away, one by one, then inhaled sharply when Steve worked his hand through the flap of his underwear and closed his hand around Bucky’s cock, already awakening beneath his fingertips.

Just that was enough to make Steve’s knees weak; he began to clumsily work the buttons of his own fly with his left hand when Bucky reached forward to help him.

Steve made a little noise he didn’t understand when he felt Bucky’s hand on his dick, the light warm sure pressure of his fingers gently massaging him as he came to life beneath his best friend’s touch.

“I don’t know how long I can keep standing,” Steve said hoarsely, trying to maintain enough presence of mind to keep stroking Bucky’s cock in return.

“Lean against me, Stevie,” Bucky said, bracing himself against the rooftop water tower and guiding Steve a step and a half forward with his other hand. “I got you.”

 Steve braced himself against the water tower with his left arm for leverage, while Bucky steadied him at the hip, his strong thumb digging into the divot of his pelvis and his fingers pressed hard into the scant meat of Steve’s ass.

It was strange and awkward and they both kept losing their rhythm and getting so distracted by their own pleasure that sometimes they lost their grips on each other or forgot to move, but it was joyful and silly too, and at one point when he was getting close, Steve glanced up at Bucky and met his eyes and they both gave each other bright breathless grins that Steve thought could power the entire Stark Expo for days.

Steve had never felt anything like this before—he was electric in every way, his body quivering and shaking and only nominally his to command. His hand clutched Bucky’s shirt and his chest shuddered and his hips jerked and his knees shook and the noises he made he could hardly recognize as his own. He was possessed by lust, by need, and he wished he were tall enough to kiss Bucky, to bite his lip or his ear or his shoulder, but he wasn’t, so he leaned forward and pressed his forehead into Bucky’s chest instead.

He came way too fast, and then his own arm began to tire so badly that Bucky gently pushed his hand away to finish himself off, but bless him, he kept holding onto Steve as he did, kept looking into his eyes as he came.

Even now, Steve wondered where Bucky had learned to do that, where Bucky had learned how to make him feel like he was exactly where he needed to be, doing exactly what Bucky needed him to do. Of course, Bucky had always done that in some form or fashion—always stuck up for him, always included him, always made him feel like he belonged in a world that wasn’t made for a little guy whose lungs would never let him keep up with everyone else.

And as to put him back in his place, as if to remind him that happiness was never going to be his to have, that not even sin was his to have, Steve’s happy, satisfied afterglow sighs escalated into a hard wheeze, and Bucky was right there, easing him down onto the quilt and rubbing his back as tears began to run down Steve’s face.

“You need your shot, Stevie?” he asked, struggling to keep his voice steady. Steve shook his head, trying to will his throat and chest to relax, but they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t, his head was starting to swim, and Christ, he was going to be in trouble soon so he changed his mind and began to nod.

It had been months since he’d had an attack this bad. He couldn’t stand, so Bucky wrapped Steve in the blanket and scooped him up as easy as you please—Steve weighed nothing, had always weighed nothing—and hurried him down the stairs to Steve’s apartment.

He deposited Steve on the sofa and ran to the bathroom to fetch the vial of epinephrine and the little syringe, drawing a dose as he walked, a bottle of iodine and some cotton wool tucked under his arm. After a decade of friendship Bucky had become an old pro at it, steadying Steve’s hand when he needed it, taking over when he couldn’t even manage that much.

“Let me,” Bucky murmured, pushing Steve’s sleeve up and swabbed his arm with iodine before expertly punching the needle through his skin. Steve was drowning so badly he didn’t notice, his entire universe shrunk down to his need for oxygen, and Bucky discarded the syringe and rubbed Steve’s back and held his hand and murmured, “It’s okay, pal. I’ve got you,” over and over again until Steve felt the vice around his lungs begin to relax.

“Feeling better?” Bucky asked after a few minutes. “You look better.”

Steve nodded weakly.

“Want a Coke?” Bucky asked, and Steve nodded again.

Bucky went into the kitchen and came back with two cold bottles from the icebox, with a paper straw in Steve’s, because Steve’s doctor said drinking from straws was safer afterward. Less chance of choking that way.

“Here,” Bucky said, handing Steve his Coke as he took his seat again. “Who knew I could have that kind of an effect on a guy?” he joked, though the cavalier tone of his voice stood sharply at odds with the concern plain on his face.

“Fuck you,” Steve said glumly, taking a careful sip, coughing, then trying again. The cold bubbles soothed his throat, and he took long cautious sips from the straw like a child.

“Hey, it’s all right, Stevie,” Bucky said, far more cavalierly than Steve could tell he felt. “You know I’d never let anything bad happen to you, right?”

“I’m not a cripple, Buck,” Steve said harshly. “I can take care of myself.”

“I know,” Bucky said patiently. “But you don’t have to.”

“Go away, Buck,” Steve insisted. “I just want to be alone right now, okay?”

Bucky bit his lip, but he nodded and stood. “You’ll telephone if you need anything?” he asked tentatively.

Steve didn’t answer, and he didn’t watch Bucky leave.

Steve avoided him at school for the rest of the week, too embarrassed and angry to meet his friend’s eyes. But gradually, inch by inch, he began to allow Bucky back into his orbit, began to allow Bucky to make him laugh, began to allow Bucky to stand up for him whenever he got into a fight he couldn’t finish. And it was good to have him back, good to have a friend again, and sometimes—sometimes—it felt almost like old times.

But the terror was still there, a wraith haunting his desire, and Steve never invited Bucky up to the roof again. Sometimes Bucky hinted at it, he thought—no, he knew—but it was always just vague enough about it for Steve to plausibly misunderstand. And he always did.

And eventually, Bucky stopped hinting altogether. The weather grew too cold to sit on the roof and then Steve’s mother died, and the war came, and Bucky left, and only Steve remained behind, alone.

* * *

While Sam set security beacons around the house, Steve sent Bucky to shower and change while he organized some kind of supper from the canned goods in the pantry. There were beans and vegetables and canned smoked trout and a box of stale pasta, and it was hardly gourmet, but it would do.

Once that was done and left to warm on the stove, Steve went back for his turn in the shower and a long-overdue change of clothes. But first he had to make sure Bucky was done—operational discipline required one of them to have the watch at all times.

“Buck?” he called softly, knocking on his old friend’s door. “It’s Steve. Can I come in?”

There was no answer, so Steve opened the door and let himself in. It was a good sign that Bucky hadn’t locked it, at least.

The water was still running in the shower. Steve sat on the bed for a while, waiting for Bucky to finish, but after a while he realized that Bucky wasn’t moving in there. He pressed his ear to the door to confirm before knocking loudly and letting himself in.

“Buck? It’s me,” he said as he opens the door, hoping Bucky wasn’t waiting on the other side with a knife.

He wasn’t. He was sitting in the tub with his knees drawn up to his chest, letting the water strike his back. From the raw, red cast of his skin, he’d been doing it ever since he came back here.

“Buck,” Steve said, turning the water off, ignoring as best he could Bucky’s nakedness. “You’ll scald yourself.”

“What?” Bucky said, only vaguely seeming to register that the water had stopped. “Oh, Steve. Hi.”

“You’re using up all the hot water,” Steve said mildly, flipping the toilet lid down and taking a seat next to the tub. “You okay?”

Bucky turned his head toward Steve and shot him a halfhearted grin. “I look okay to you?” The strangled timbre of his voice told Steve how much it had cost Bucky to make that joke.

“Nope,” Steve said. Bucky began to shiver a little and Steve put a tentative hand on his back, between his shoulder blades. Or rather, between his right shoulder blade and the articulated vibranium plate that had replaced his left. The arm was fused to his nerves and could sense pressure and texture, Bucky had explained, but not heat or cold or pain. This was the first time Steve was able to see the attachment up close, the thick, livid keloid scar lining the margin of the limb like a welding seam, and the clotted, discolored halo of grafted skin as broad as Steve’s hand surrounding it. Those weren’t the only scars, either—he had at least two bullet holes and five knife wounds that Steve could see, plus a long one along his backbone that suggested a spinal surgery at some point.

Bucky flinched a little at Steve’s touch, but didn’t object. “This all right, Buck?” Steve asked, and Bucky nodded.

“I used to tell myself I was a bad person, back in Romania,” he said softly, matter-of-factly. “That there was no way I could have done all the things Hydra made me do unless I was already evil to begin with. But the things you say to me, the way you _are_ around me—I know I wasn’t. Being around you makes me remember what it was like to be good, and that’s making it really fucking hard to accept all the things I’ve done since.”

Steve bit his lip. “You don’t have to come with us, Buck.”

“No,” Bucky said. “I need to do this. I need to start making things right.”

“I understand that, but if you’re not ready—”

“I’ll be ready,” Bucky promised. “Some food and sleep, and I’ll be good as new.”

Steve had a hard time believing that, but he patted Bucky’s back one last time before handing him a towel. “You start getting in trouble again, you tell me and Sam, okay?” he said, standing and moving toward the door. “Don’t wait for it to get bad.”

“ _You’re_ lecturing _me_ on not shutting people out now?” Bucky asked, his smile returning for real.

Steve felt the knot in his chest loosen a fraction and he smiled back. “Dinner’s ready whenever you are.”

* * *

Back in the living room, it took Steve half a minute to realize that the ringing phone was coming from inside the bag containing his uniform. He quickly dumped the contents to find a burner phone tucked into one of his gloves. He didn’t recognize the number.

“I don’t have long,” Sharon said, without waiting for Steve to speak. “Ross gave Tony 36 hours to find you before he calls out the dogs. That was about three hours ago.”

Steve checked his watch. It would be tight, but they’d probably be able to cross Russian airspace before every intelligence service in Europe started looking for them. Tony had made a sentimental mistake by buying them the extra time, Steve thought sadly, and he intended to make the most of it.

“Understood,” Steve said. Then, because there was no time to be kind about it: “The phone was a mistake. I can’t bring you down with me. Don’t call again.”

“What the hell, Steve? I brought you your gear. They’re going to figure out who it was sooner or later.”

“Then tell them I threatened you. Throw me under the bus if you have to,” Steve said. “Do whatever it takes, but don’t let yourself get arrested. I mean it.”

“Steve, don’t.”

“Don’t call again.”

“Steve—”

Steve hung up and crushed the phone in his fist.

“Lovers’ spat?” Sam asked mildly, and Steve pretended not to notice that his gaze flicked toward Bucky when he did.

“Sam,” Bucky said, glancing at Steve’s face, a soft warning in his voice.

But it was too late. Steve was already on his way out to the deck overlooking the lake, his food untouched on the table.

It had been a mistake to kiss her, he knew, but there in the half-light beneath the underpass, he could see it now, the same angle of Peggy’s jaw, the same line of her nose. The same stubborn righteousness. The same ferocious independence. The same—

They’d understood each other, Steve and Peg, understood that that he would never be wholly hers in the same way she would never be wholly his, but they could promise each other love of a different sort, friendship and affection and protection from a world unwilling to make a place for people like them. It might not have been what they wanted or deserved, but it was real, and it was powerful, and he’d cherished it all the same. He was glad she’d found another man who could be that for her, even gladder that after he died the world had changed enough that she could spend her final years with the true love of her life, Angie.

He missed her so very much.  

“Penny for your thoughts?” Bucky asked, sliding the glass door open.

“It’s the 21st century now, Buck,” Steve said. “Thoughts cost a dollar now, at least.”

“That woman’s important to you. Sharon.”

“She’s Peggy’s—” Steve began, then shook his head. “I owe it to Peg to protect her.”

“I remember Peggy. She hated me,” Bucky said. “I’m sorry you didn’t get more time with her.” He reached over and squeezed Steve’s shoulder, and Steve startled at the electricity it sent to his belly. “Sorry,” Bucky said quickly, removing his hand.

“No,” Steve said. “No, it was—” he glanced up at the sky in search of the words he didn’t know how to say. “Thank you.”

Bucky smiled. “We’ve been here before, haven’t we?” he asked, nodding out toward the lake. “November of ‘44. Dugan—was that his name?—had sprained his ankle so we stopped for a day so he could rest. That was real, right?”

Dum Dum had complained like a great big baby about it, too, Steve recalled. “How in the world do you remember that?”

“I don’t know. I think being here with you jogged my memory,” Bucky said, pointing diagonally across the lake toward a stand of dense forest. “We must have been right over there.”

“I remember the trees had all turned color,” Steve said. “When the sun was low, it looked like the whole forest was on fire.”

“That all you remember?” Bucky asked.

Steve blushed. Even though temperatures had begun to drop below freezing already, they were too close enough to the German lines to risk a fire. Instead, the Howling Commandos had doubled and tripled up on their bedrolls for warmth. As the strongest two, Bucky and Steve had taken the spot closest to the water, where an even colder breeze blew in. It was partially screened off from the others by a fallen tree, and they’d felt quite alone as they lay there together in each other’s arms as American B52’s carpet bombed the German encampment in the valley to the east, no longer even flinching at the explosions that lit that edge of the night sky as bright as day.

Despite their exhaustion, they were too cold and too keyed up to sleep. He thought it was an accident at first, Bucky shifting his weight a little against a particularly sharp gust of wind, his hand slipping under Steve’s coat and sweater to press against the bare skin of his back.

Steve looked at Bucky in surprise, but Bucky just gave him a small, abstracted smile and met his eyes in that old familiar way that told him it had not been an accident at all. The sky groaned overhead with another wave of bombers and moments later the valley erupted in another firestorm that shook the ground beneath them and that was when Steve kissed him for the first time.

He felt Bucky’s mouth crack into a smile beneath his lips and they both laughed a little before they kissed again. Bucky slid his other hand beneath Steve’s shirt and Steve did the same to him and it was too fucking cold to undress but they could still explore each other’s bodies with their fingertips while they kissed. Bucky had always been powerfully built, but the German serum had made a god of him, Steve thought as his fingers traced the marble-smooth curves of his muscles, coiled tight as steel cables beneath his skin.

Bucky began to fumble with Steve’s belt and Steve began to do the same and they took each other in their hands like they had when they were boys.

Only this time, they knew what sex was, knew how to give pleasure and how to manage their own. Not with other men, perhaps—at least not for Steve—but a rapid pulse and hitched breaths and little trembles and moans were all part of a universal vocabulary of desire. The new terrain wasn’t exactly hard to read.

This time Bucky came first, biting Steve’s shoulder hard to keep quiet, jerking and thrashing beneath his grip and spattering the woollen bedroll and the hem of Steve’s sweater with sticky warmth. Bucky gave a breathless little laugh and collapsed against him, pressing his forehead against Steve’s as he caught his breath before dropping quick little kisses on his mouth and nose in gratitude.

It took everything Steve had not to gasp when Bucky wriggled down beneath the blanket and took his cock in his mouth. Where Bucky had learned to do that, Steve had no idea, but his mind was too blank with pleasure to consider the matter further. He and Peggy had only ever relieved each other’s needs with their hands. The thought of anything else was unbearable.

It wasn’t fair, Steve thought as Bucky brought him nearer and nearer to the strongest orgasm of his life. He’d tried to warn Bucky that he was close, but Bucky had just gripped his ass harder and kept going until Steve groaned to keep himself from shouting the others awake.

After a moment, Bucky released him and slid back up to face him, planting a happy, wet, cum-slick kiss on Steve’s mouth before reaching for his half-frozen canteen. Steve licked the cum from his lips—it was the first time he’d ever tasted it. He wondered how different Bucky’s was.

He’d never had a chance to find out. They’d moved out the next day, then split up for a few weeks so Bucky could lead a recon team around to get a closer look at the Hydra base they were sent to destroy. Not long after that, they moved south and up, into the Bavarian mountains toward Regensburg, toward the Danube, toward the train. Toward the ice.

“We were in love,” Bucky said. It wasn’t a question. “I remember that much. I know it. And we had been for a long time.”

Steve shook his head. “Could you ever have imagined living in a world where we could’ve had a chance?”

“Don’t need to imagine it anymore,” Bucky said, turning to look at Steve.

Steve swallowed and then met his gaze, and there were those level green eyes he remembered from the rooftop, somehow simultaneously boring into him and drawing him in. And then suddenly a sob bubbled up and he put his face into his hands, as though that would hide anything from his oldest friend. Bucky wasn’t the only man he’d ever been with—Sam had set him up a few times with a colleague from the VA, a congressional staffer he played pickup basketball with, an old Air Force buddy, men Sam could vouch for, who wouldn’t run to the tabloids or get spooked by Steve’s fame. But none of them had really worked out because none of them were _him_. As long as Bucky was alive, he knew he was never going to be happy with anyone else.

Bucky put his hand on Steve’s shoulder again and this time Steve reached up and covered Bucky’s hand with his, pressing it hard against his shoulder before lifting it away and kissing it.

“Don’t stop there,” Bucky said hoarsely.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Please,” he said. “We might not get another chance.”

Steve kissed his hand again and stood, and Bucky did not let go. He stood with Steve and followed him back into the house.

“Guess I’ve got the first watch,” Sam sighed.

* * *

Bucky’s room was the furthest from the living room, with a large picture window that flooded the room with moonlight. Bucky placed his hand—his real one—on Steve’s shoulder before running it up around the back of his neck and drawing him into a kiss.

“Take off your clothes,” Steve murmured, nipping his lower lip. “I want to see you.”

They both undressed slowly but deliberately, shoes and socks and jeans and shirts, until they were both facing each other in nothing but their underwear, strangely shy at the last moment even as their growing erections made their desire for each other plain. Steve reached forward to touch Bucky’s chest, his pinky resting lightly on the seam of scar tissue that anchored his prosthetic arm to his shoulder.

Bucky tensed a little, then cast a glance at the arm. “I can’t take it off, but I won’t touch you with it,” he said.

“It doesn’t scare me,” Steve said softly, though that was perhaps more wish than fact. He moved his hand across the barrier of scar tissue to touch it. It was warm, he realized—not quite as warm as the rest of him, but warmer than he expected it to be. And smoother, too. The jointed plates fit together tightly and their edges were rounded so he wouldn’t shred his shirts. A weirdly thoughtful detail, Steve observed, but that was Nazis for you—orchestras and death camps.

Bucky let him manipulate the wrist and fingers, feel the strength in them, and the more he did, the more his curiosity dissolved into panic. He would never forgive Hydra for how they had mutilated his body and his mind, for chaining him permanently to this machine of death, and he tried not to shudder when Bucky clasped the hand around his.

His revulsion shamed him. Bucky had not asked for this.

“I hate it,” Bucky said, releasing Steve’s hand and letting the arm drop to his side. “I remember every person I ever killed with it. I tried to remove it once in Bucharest, but I couldn’t find anything to cut through the vibranium. And then I thought maybe it was a sign that I didn’t deserve to forget.”

“I promise when this is all over, I’m going to find a way to help you get rid of this thing,” Steve said fervently. He placed his hand on Bucky’s chest again, though this time he did not touch the arm at all. “We should have come back for you,” he said, his guilt finally coalescing into words. “We should have saved you.”

Bucky froze for a moment beneath his touch, and Steve realized that he had not known until just now that he’d been abandoned. But then he took a deep breath and shook his head. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” he said. “There was no safe way down for miles, and even if you could have found one, I would have been long gone by the time you got there. And stopping Schmidt was more important.”

“I don’t care,” Steve whispered. “We should have tried. We shouldn’t have assumed you were—”

“Shhh,” Bucky said, drawing him into a one-armed hug and placing a gentle kiss on his temple. “I’m right here, Stevie,” he said, his voice kind but firm. “I don’t understand why or how, but we have a second chance, and I want to take it.” He pressed his cheek against Steve’s. “I want this. I want you.”

Steve didn’t answer, just nodded into Bucky’s shoulder, then stepped back to remove his underwear. Bucky did the same, and then drew Steve down onto the bed. He climbed on top of him, covering him with kisses and gentle bites to his ears and throat, humming victoriously every time Steve’s breath stumbled over itself.

They were both already half hard and Bucky dipped his hips a little so they could both grind against one another, and Steve groaned with pleasure. He could not stop touching Bucky, running his hands over his chest and down his sides, grabbing his ass and pulling him even closer.

This was a dream, of course. He must have drifted off on his watch, leaving his brain free to play with all his memories and hopes and desires, knitting in his subconscious what could never be mended in life. There would be no happy ending for them, never had been, just strangled breaths and icy falls and more pain than either one of them ever thought possible to bear. Solitude was his birthright and he would never be free of it, not really. There would never be a future where they could’ve had a chance. It didn’t exist. It never would. This was a dream. It was all just a dream.

“Stevie?” Bucky said softly, kissing his collarbone. “Where’d you go, pal?”

“Sorry,” Steve said wonderingly. He touched Bucky’s face, traced his eyebrow and the line of his jaw, running his thumb up the divot of his chin to his lip. Bucky opened his mouth and bit it gently and Steve blushed and smiled and turned away, the blatant eroticism of it somehow too much to bear.

Bucky seemed to realize it and released his thumb, leaning down to kiss him again. “Stay with me, Stevie,” he said. “Look me in the eyes.”

And Steve did, and they were back on his Brooklyn rooftop, his balls aching, digging his fingers into Bucky’s ass, and his dick was already damp with need, and he was so close he thought his heart might stop.

Bucky sensed it and rolled off to the side while Steve groaned a little in protest. He took Steve’s cock in his hand, playing with it gently as he dusted Steve’s ear with little kisses and nosed around in his hair. It was sweet and tender and agonizingly delicious, and it took all of Steve’s self-control not to bat his hand away so he could finish himself off right then and there.

“I want you to fuck me,” Bucky murmured. “Would you be all right with that?”

Steve was more than all right with that. (The Congressional aide from Alabama had been an eager and generous teacher, and though they’d had almost nothing else in common, Steve had enjoyed the hell out of being taught.)

Bucky kissed him and then got up to retrieve a small tube from his backpack.

Steve laughed in disbelief. “You travel that light, and you still carry lube?”

Bucky gave a wry smile and pointed toward the seam of scar tissue that joined the prosthesis to his torso. “Medical-grade liquid silicone. It’s for my arm,” he said. “But it works pretty great for this, too.”

Bucky straddled Steve’s legs and took his time, drizzling a thread-fine stream of the cool substance across his skin, like Jackson Pollock using his dick as a canvas. The slowness of it, the coolness of it, the lightness of it made Steve’s hips arch upward, hungry for friction—anything for release.

“You’re killing me, Buck,” he hissed through gritted teeth, digging his hands into Bucky’s thighs so hard he knew he’d leave bruises.

Bucky leaned forward to kiss Steve’s belly, careful not to touch his eager dick.

“Oh Jesus,” Steve mumbled. “I want to fuck you so bad right now.”

“Language, Stevie,” Bucky teased, flicking his tongue against Steve’s skin.

Steve grabbed his hips and hauled Bucky forward so he could reposition himself.

Bucky laughed and reached back to give himself a little lube first, his own half-hard dick flexing with his breath, and then slowly—ever so slowly—began to ease himself onto Steve’s cock.

Steve stayed very still as Bucky let him in a few centimeters at a time, gently pulsing his muscles to relax them as he went. A fine sweat broke out over his skin and he was biting his lower lip, breathing deeply through the initial discomfort until it passed, and then his face softened and he began to smile.

“You okay?” Steve asked softly, and Bucky nodded almost dreamily and began to gently rock his hips. He reached forward with his right hand and clasped Steve’s hand tightly, supporting himself with his left. He was serious about not touching Steve with it, and Steve was briefly ashamed that he was glad. But then Bucky locked eyes with him and murmured, “It’s okay to move now,” and Steve forgot all about the arm and did as he was asked.

Gently at first, carefully figuring out how they fit together, working out their synchrony, they rolled their hips in slow waves until they found their cadence.

Once they finally did, it was like a bomb went off. Bucky began to ride him harder and he responded in kind, driving himself inside as Bucky gazed directly into his eyes, biting his lip but smiling all the same. And then he could not wait any longer and he came and God, he’d shouted, he was sure of it, but he didn’t care whether Sam heard, whether anyone heard, because Bucky was there, he was really there, and Steve was with him.

Bucky stayed very still for a moment until the aftershocks passed, then eased himself off and lay to Steve’s side.

Bucky snuggled up against him, his right arm across Steve’s chest, and kissed his shoulder, pressing his own half-hard dick against Steve’s hip and beginning to rub against it.

“Don’t move,” Steve said. He got up and went into the bathroom to piss and clean himself up. He hadn’t bothered to turn on the light, but the moon was bright enough that he could see himself well enough in the mirror, mussed hair and bitten lips, exhaustion-bruised eyes and a glow he had never seen before.

This is real, he reminded himself. Don’t question it.

“On your back,” Steve said lazily as he strolled back in. He knew exactly what he wanted to do.

Bucky grinned and complied, tucking his left arm under the pillow beneath his head to keep it out of the way as he watched as Steve straddle him. Steve leaned forward to kiss him deeply, thrusting his tongue into Bucky’s mouth and nibbling at his lips before kissing his way over to his ear.

Bucky shuddered and gasped at that, so Steve kissed him more hungrily now, down Bucky’s neck and collarbone—skirting the vibranium but wholly untroubled by the scar tissue surrounding it—while Bucky just looked at him with an openmouthed half-smile on his face that quirked up a little every time Steve’s lips touched his skin.

When Steve reached his nipples, he gasped again. Steve took each one in his teeth in turn, flicking his tongue against them until they hardened, biting gently when they did. Bucky reached down and began playing a little with his own cock, lightly stroking it with his thumb and moving his hips a little as Steve worked his way down his chest toward his belly.

“And where do you think you’re going, mister?” he asked slyly, and Steve just grinned and flicked his tongue against Bucky’s navel. That did something nice to him, Steve noticed—Bucky’s breath caught hard and his hips jerked—so Steve did it again, and this time Bucky groaned a little.

“I dunno, Buck, maybe I should just stop here,” Steve said mildly, giving his navel another swipe with his tongue. “Wouldn’t want to overwhelm you or anything.”

Bucky let out a breathless laugh and pushed against Steve’s shoulder, urging him to keep going.

Bucky was already hard as iron and let out a quivering gasp as Steve slowly—ever so slowly—licked the full length of him from balls to tip before sliding his mouth down over him.

“Oh, God, Stevie,” Bucky said, playing a little with Steve’s hair and turning to bite into the pillow. His hips shivered with tiny explosions of pleasure at first, but they grew stronger and stronger and soon enough they were bucking against him with an urgency that made Steve’s heart soar. This was what he’d always wanted, this right here, his mouth full of him, the heat pouring off his skin and the rich heady scent of him flooding his nose and the belly-deep moans of ecstasy that rumbled through his bones.

“I’m gonna come, Stevie,” Bucky gasped, but Steve just stayed where he was, let Bucky fill him up so he could drink him down, and oh God, maybe he had been wrong, maybe this was the best thing ever, the salt and the tang and even just the force of it against the back of his throat eviscerated Steve in the most delicious possible way.

He gave Bucky a moment or two to recover before sliding off him. He gave him a quick kiss on each thigh before moving back up to the head of the bed to lie next to him.

Bucky was blissed out with eyes half-closed and mouth half-open, and when Steve rejoined him he rolled over onto his left side and pressed a kiss to Steve’s mouth. “I remember feeling like this with you before,” he said. “I don’t remember where it was. We were outside, up high somewhere. All I know is that it was the best feeling in the world.”

“I’ve been in love with you since I was 17 years old,” Steve said. “I never stopped.”

Bucky bit his lip, knowing he could not say the same, not exactly. “When this is all over,” he said instead, “I want you to tell me everything about us, okay?”

Steve held him more tightly. “I will. I promise.”

* * *

Bucky was asleep by the time Steve got out of the shower. It wasn’t even midnight yet, but he was too wired to sleep. He dressed and padded down the hall toward the living area, where Sam was watching the news on mute while keeping an eye on the feed from the security beacons on the laptop next to him.

“Hey,” Steve said to Sam, crossing to the kitchen for a glass of water. “Get some sleep. I got the rest of the night.”

“You trust him, Steve?” Sam asked.

Steve didn’t answer at first, just drank his water. “I trust that the man I knew is still in there,” he said eventually. “I trust that he’s stronger than whatever Hydra put into his head.”

“Not what I asked.”

Steve leaned forward on the counter and began to trace the grout on the tile. “What choice do we have? Leave him behind? Hand him over to Ross and Tony? They’ll put him in the RAFT for the rest of his life. I can’t do that, Sam.”

“I know you won’t,” Sam said. “I’m not questioning your loyalty to him.”

“Better question is whether _you_ trust him,” Steve said. “I can’t bring you with me if you don’t have my back on this.”

Sam hesitated, hands on hips, then shook his head in surrender. “I trust _you_ ,” he said after a moment. “Don’t get me killed, okay?”

“If you’re looking for promises like that, you’re in the wrong line of work, pal,” Steve said.

“Okay, but this goes south, I will _haunt_ your ass,” Sam warned.

Steve gave a tight grin and nodded. “Noted. Now get some sleep,” he said. “That’s an order.”

Sam gave him a dismissive wave over his shoulder as he shuffled down the hall to his room.

Steve checked the security beacon feeds on Sam’s laptop. All was quiet on the Western front, so he heated up his uneaten dinner and carried it over to the sofa to watch the news. Bucky’s face was everywhere—and so was his and Sam’s. Nobody seemed to have twigged that Wanda and Clint were missing yet, though Sam had confirmed that they were in the air, and he was pretty sure nobody would connect any of them to Tic-Tac, assuming the ex-felon had come home to anyone who would miss him in the first place.

When he caught a glimpse of Sharon standing behind Secretary Ross at a press conference, clearly still very much on the job, he allowed himself a microscopic measure of relief.

To be honest, he was more worried about Tony. He’d inherited all of Howard’s hubris but none of his perspective, a combination that had left him simultaneously unafraid of tackling the world’s most daunting challenges and completely unable to predict—or cope with—the consequences.

That’s what the accords were about, in the end. This had nothing to do with Wanda being unable to control her own power—Tony was afraid of what would happen if _he_ lost control of _his_. Again.

He should have reached out to Tony after the Battle of New York instead of letting him go back to California and try to bury his trauma in his lab—he understood that now. But Steve had only been out of the ice for a year and most of what he knew about being a man was still stuck in 1945—holing up in the workshop was just what men did when the world got to be too much. It wasn’t until he met Sam that he learned it didn’t have to be that way.

By then it was too late. Tony wasn’t maimed the way Bucky had been, but his wound was a broken bone badly set, and the only way to fix it was to break it again.

Steve never thought he’d be the one who had to do the breaking.

Steve sighed. It had been only a week since the accident in Lagos, but it felt like he’d been on the run for a hundred years.

* * *

He awoke with a start at dawn, panicked to realize he’d fallen asleep on his watch. He scrolled back through the security feeds as quickly as he could to ensure that he hadn’t missed anything, then picked up Bucky’s Makarov and began a careful sweep of the house to make sure. He almost never carried a gun anymore, but his shield was in the bedroom and he wasn’t above putting a bullet in someone’s knee to cover an escape if he had to.

But all he found was Sam and Bucky, sound asleep. He went ahead and woke them, then went back to the kitchen to start some coffee. Four hours of bad sleep on a sofa were better than nothing, but he still needed all the help he could get.

Bucky was the first to join him. “Here,” he said, dropping a piece of paper next to Steve’s mug on his way to the coffeemaker. “Memorize this.”

“What is this?” Steve asked, giving the words a skeptical look before realizing he was reading transliterated Russian. A freezing cold flush poured through him. “No,” he said quickly, crumpling the paper and throwing it away.

Bucky scooped it up on his way back to the table with his coffee, smoothed it out, and handed it back. “I overheard your conversation with Sam. He’s right to worry,” he said, sitting down next to him. “This is your insurance policy.”

Steve shook his head. “No way. I will _never_ do that to you, Buck.”

“You may not have a choice, Steve,” Bucky said evenly. “If you don’t, _he_ will. Whose side you want me on?”

“You won’t—” Steve protested.

“I will,” Bucky said. “Listen to me. I will. I will, and I might not give you enough time to talk me down again this time.” He took a deep breath. “You should do it now, before he has a chance to get to me. I’ll resist at first, and you might have to hold me down, but you have to keep going. By the fifth or sixth word it’ll start to work.”

“I won’t make you my slave,” Steve said, his voice tripping over the last word. What Bucky was asking him to do violated everything he believed in.

Bucky gave a sad smile and took his hand. “I’m giving you permission. It’s the only way to keep him from using me against you.”

Steve bit his lip and shook his head. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“Then you’ll have to put me down, Stevie,” Bucky said quietly. “You understand that, right? If he gets to me, you have to promise to put me down.”

“Buck, no—”

“Please, Steve,” Bucky said, emotion cracking his voice. “I can’t go back to that life. Please. Promise me you won’t let that happen.”

“Learn the words, Steve,” Sam said, leaning in the doorway. Steve had not heard him come down the hallway. “That way we at least stand a chance of getting him back afterward.”

Steve rubbed his mouth, then took the paper. Then, after a moment’s study, he folded it and handed it to Sam. “I trust you with my life, and with his,” he said. “And I trust you to make the right call, because I can’t. Not this one.”

Sam nodded and accepted the paper. “I’ll hold off until we get to Siberia, okay?” he said. “But I won’t hesitate when the time comes.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said softly.

Steve abruptly went back to his room and sat on the bed. It still smelled like him—like _them_ —and the next thing he knew he was leaning forward on his knees, weeping like a child. Losing Peggy, betraying Tony, recovering Bucky—his heart had never felt so exhausted. He had no time for these feelings, no capacity for them right now, but here they all were, all at once, demanding to be heard, and for the first time in his life he considered the merits of retreat.

What if they didn’t go after Zemo and the Winter Soldiers? What if they just left the address of the Siberian Hydra base with Sharon and just disappeared?

With SHIELD’s intelligence infrastructure in tatters, there were plenty of places where they could hide, heal, maybe even make a life together. He couldn’t stop thinking about Clint’s farm, couldn’t stop thinking about Clint and Laura sitting on the porch swing together after the kids had gone to bed, holding hands like high schoolers while they discussed plans for the new sun room. Clint had walked away for his family’s sake, and Steve had thought no less of him for it. Why couldn’t Steve and Bucky do the same? Wasn’t Bucky as much his family as Laura was Clint’s?

But he knew why: Because in just a few days—maybe just a few hours—Baron Zemo was going to activate the deadliest team of supersoldiers ever created, and there was no way the Avengers were going to be let out of their cage in time to stop him. Steve had never walked away from a bully before, and he wasn’t about to start now.

“Steve?” Sam called softly, knocking on the door. “Clint’s en route. We should move.”

“Coming,” Steve said, wiping his eyes and standing up to gather his gear.

He took one last look at the bed before he left. At least they’d had one night together. It was not enough. They would never have enough time together. They would never be able to make up for what they’d lost. But Bucky was right: They’d gotten a second chance. They could still start now.

* * *

Of course it all went to hell, didn’t it? Twenty-four hours later, Bucky and Steve were piloting the stolen quinjet from Siberia to Wakanda with Prince T’Challa’s jet on their wing, one bearing a patient, the other bearing a prisoner, both seeking redemption, or recovery, or perhaps both.

It had been Bucky’s decision. Seeing the video of himself killing Tony’s parents—Howard was one of Steve’s best friends, for God’s sake—had rattled him badly. He needed the kind of help and stability Steve could not give him, not on the run. Wakanda could give him that, and more: They could also remove the remnants of Hydra’s arm, even give him a new prosthesis if he wanted one. He wasn’t entirely sure he did. His mind and his body had been violated so many times over the years—he was in no hurry for more surgeries or procedures. Maybe he’d be ready for a new arm one day, but for now he was content make peace with what he had left.

Steve, for his part, tried to swallow his heartbreak, because Bucky was right, and he knew it. He would be better off with T’Challa.

Steve set the autopilot and went into the back of the jet, where Bucky was resting on one of the cots near the weapons locker. All the ribs on his left side had been broken by Tony’s blast, and he’d gotten second- and third-degree burns from the flame. Steve knew he was in a lot more pain than he let on.

“Hey,” he said, lifting his hand a little.

“Hey, you’re awake,” Steve said, taking his hand. Bucky scooted over a little on the cot so Steve could sit next to him.

“How far out are we?”

“A while yet,” Steve said. “Six, seven hours at least.”

Bucky gave a tired smile and closed his eyes again. “Mm,” he said. “Plenty of time.”

“Plenty of time for what?” Steve asked.

“You promised to tell me all about us,” he said. “We might not get another chance for a while.”

Steve swallowed hard and kissed Bucky’s hand. “Okay, pal,” he said hoarsely.

And he did.

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah! Stucky! I think it came out all right. Comments are always appreciated. 
> 
> I also do the thing at [Tumblr](https://beaarthurpendragon.tumblr.com/).


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